Monday night dinner.

Ramen. I know what your thinking MICHELLLE!!!!! Its sooooo boring!!! Yes normally it is, but I decided to spice it up a bit tonight. I know I know there are a million and one websites with ramen twists, but I couldn't find what I was looking for. So I made it up.

Ingredients

3 Chicken Ramen packets

3 cups of Chicken Broth

3 cups water

1 tsp of soy sauce ( or more to taste)

1 tsp of Toasted Sesame oil

1 tsp chili paste

2 tsp of Coconut Milk ( again more to taste if you like it)

1 ramen packet

canned green beans ( or other veggie, corn, carrots whatever you have on hand)

snow peas, or sugar snap peas ( or whatever you have on hand)

Method

place the 3 cups of broth, 3 cups of water in a large sauce pan or small dutch oven. Add soy sauce, chili paste, and sesame oil. Bring to rolling boil. I usually allow this to boil for at least 2 min or so. Add coconut milk, then ramen noodles and ramen packet. boil/simmer for a minute to a minute and a half. Add vegetables you have, finish cooking ramen noodles for the remaining 1 1/2-2 mins.

Serve in cute mini bowls with chopsticks.

You can always omit the veggies and just serve the noodles with the broth, add chicken if you wish or other protein. I think its a good base to start with and you can just go from there. I used chicken because it was what I had on hand, but if you have beef ramen mix it with beef broth and so on and so forth. Veggie broth is also a great alternative.

This serves at least 4 kids 2 servings each.

Book reviews... Oh yeah I do that.

Lately I have been at the Library like its my job. ( I am mayor there via 4square) So I am here to share a few ( and by a few I mean just 2 lol) books with all of you.

The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno, By: Ellen Bryson

Bartholomew Fortuno is the World's Thinnest Man, employed by P.T Barnum in his Museum in 1865. Bartholomew is happy being a prodigy with his best friend Matina, the fat lady, and Alley the strong man, performing during the week for the crowd, sharing his 'gift' as he sees it.... Until he sees a new act come in and is suddenly intrigued. The new act is a woman Iell who has a gift beyond all imagination ( even *I* was shocked at the revelation).

I had a hard time trying to get into the book at first. I think it was more me than the book. It is well written and captivating, I really wanted to see what the whole deal was and what was going on with Iell and Barnum and Bartholomew. I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

Julie & Julia: My year of cooking dangerously, By: Julie Powell

Heard of Julia Child? Seen the movie Julie & Julia? Well this is the book from the blog that started it all. Julie Powell, fast approaching 30 and fearful she won't ever have a child decides to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She gave herself 365 days to complete 536 recipes. Will she make it?? nail biting ensues

I love LOVE the movie Julie & Julia. I watch it almost all the time. I decided to pick up the book since I loved the movie so much. Its....ok. There are times where I can't figure out what day, what recipe she is talking about. It gets a bit muddled and there are times when it seems there are flash backs within a flash back. And some of the side stories could have been omitted. Overall I give it a 2&1/2 stars out of 5. This is the kind of book you keep in your purse or diaper bag and pull out when you are waiting for an appointment or the like.

I love a super chic yet easy hairstyle.

Honestly its like the holy grail of hairstyles isn't it. A simple yet classy style that looks good for day or night. But lets be honest how often can we find something like that, that doesn't require 80 billion hair products or some specialty hair tool that of course is sold either in high end salons or way out of my $15 hair budget?? But wait. I have found it ladies and gentlemen. I have found it.

Its the messy side bun with a video tutorial via Daily candy. Listed here.

I just did this style and it took me about 15 mins. for the first time it wasn't bad. It probably would have been less if I had had enough bobby pins and did it right the first time.

I improvised with some fun little heart shaped hair clips I had laying around and simply flat ironed my bangs. success!!! This is a great style if you have wavy or curly hair that you don't want to mess with that day. Or like me took a shower the night before, air dried your hair and realized you would need to wash it again if you wanted to actually fix it the next day. Get your clear ( or black ) hair bands and bowl full of bobby pins ( and maybe some fun accessories ) and get going!!

Results.

I made the icing. Not half bad, although I was having a hard time tasting lemon, so I added some more lemon juice and then I still was feeling like I was just tasting no flavor icing, and I added vanilla extract. But just a bit. After beating the hell out of it, it really tastes of lemon with a hint of vanilla. Not bad.

There was a lot of icing despite the reviews that said there wasn't enough. I should have iced the bottom cake better, but wound up thinking I wouldn't have enough and then wound up with too much for the top. ooops. I now have the ugliest cake alive sitting in my cake server. I'm sure my husband will devour it as soon as he can.

I think that the icing is a good base for buttercream icing and will probably file it away for future use when i want to make my own sans lemon juice and lemon zest.

Lemon cake..... semi disaster

I decide to make a lemon cake recipe. Oh but wait I forgot I am no baker. Meh I figure it is worth a shot. I can follow a recipe pretty well. Google has always been a good friend as has all recipes. I click on one that looks promising. I choose this Lemon Cake Recipe from allrecipes.com. I buy all the ingredients I don't have and decide to start.

It looks rather easy and promising. Despite the fact that I have never made filling or custard or anything like that, but I figure no problem the directions are really easy. I make the cake easily enough aside from my first sanfu which is I don't have 2 8 inch round pans, but I have 1 8x8 square. ok no biggie I just bake one cake at a time. The cakes came out pretty good, the one complaint, its not really lemon cake, its vanilla cake because there is no real lemon anything in the recipe.

On to the custard/filling portion. I did it exactly as directed, except the custard taste well gross ( to me anyway). It has this eggy/metal off taste to it. However my husband loves it. I have no clue, it is tangy like lemons but it just doesn't taste right.

I am going to be making the icing here in a minute and let everyone know how it turned out. I will say as of right now, this is probably a 2 out of 5 stars for me. The cakes get sticky when cooled ( the tops) and are overly crumble and fall apart super easily. I had a hard time cutting them. Also they are really thin in terms of cake which makes cutting a bit difficult at times. I would also change the name from Lemon cake to vanilla cake with lemon frosting and lemon filling, because of the non lemon in the cake.

Off to make frosting, report back later.

A great easy hot chocolate

I'm normally a snob when it comes to hot chocolate. I usually exclusively drink Abuelita's Hot Chocolate. I love how it tastes with the hint of cinnamon. But I haven't had any lately. Sooooo time to experiment. We recently bought a big thing of Nesquick at Costco, and I have a shaker of cinnamon. So here is my recipe for hot chocolate

This is for 1 cup you simply multiply it for however many you need.

1 cup of Milk + 1/4 cup

2tbs of Nesquick

cinnamon to taste

Put the 2tbs of nesquick in your cup, put about a quarter cup of milk in there mix it to form a syrup of sorts. Shake in your cinnamon.Stir. Heat the 1 cup in a pot or by means of your choice. Pour hot milk into your premixed hot chocolate. stir and serve.

Now of course you can adjust it to your tastes, if you like more chocolate add more or don't use the extra 1/4 cup of milk. You can also add vanilla bean to the milk while its heating for extra flavor.

I did some decorating.

First sorry I have been MIA for so long. Cold weather and school closures have kept me busy. Highly upset that the schools are so inconsiderate towards me lol. We have had a ton of snow and a lot of down time with the kids ( there is such a thing as too much together time) and such.

Anyway I finally put some more decorations up on the baby's side of the room.

now time for the gratuitous picture posting.

I found out ( too late) that the sticky picture frames stick to glossy pics :/ so the 3 pics that are glossy will have permanent borders on them. meh lesson learned lol I am thinking of doing more candy pieces for the top to finish off the border, but I need more cardboard and maybe some more tissue paper. I might also just do some different sized circles instead. I'll have to see.